NBA Players Were Ready to Boycott All Three Tuesday Playoff Games

29 Apr 2014

NBA players from the Clippers, Warriors, Wizards, Bulls, Thunder and Grizzlies were ready to boycott their NBA playoff games on Tuesday if they were not satisfied with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s handling of the Donald Sterling situation.

Silver banned Sterling for life on Tuesday after a recording surfaced on Saturday in which he tells a woman who was supposedly his girlfriend that he does not want her to bring black people to his games or be seen in photographs with black people. Silver also said he “fully expects” 3/4 of the owners to vote to remove Sterling from the league and force him to sell the team.

NBA players union vice president Roger Mason Jr. said he “reached out to other players around the league and made it clear that the players were ready to boycott the games if this kind of action was not something Adam Silver felt was necessary.”

“I’m happy to come here today and say that as players we are very happy with the decision,” Mason Jr. said, according to ProBasketballTalk.

The Clippers play the Warriors, the Washington Wizards play the Chicago Bulls and the OKC Thunder play the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday night in playoff action.